


Pool Party

by Churbooseanon



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Domestic Fluff, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-27
Updated: 2015-05-27
Packaged: 2018-04-01 14:38:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4023625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Churbooseanon/pseuds/Churbooseanon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the air conditioner breaks the answer to the problem requires thinking outside of the box.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pool Party

**Author's Note:**

> For vaelei of tumblr

There were a lot of things in life that one could regret. Hair styles and high school classes and ex-boyfriends. What one had for dinner and the things you did in your free time and leaving late for an appointment you absolutely had to make it to on time. The biggest regret Tex had at the moment, though, was choosing to actually move to the state her nickname was derived from when her boyfriend had nabbed a choice grad program position at a major university. 

The reason it was a regret? 

The heat. 

Three days. Three days in the ridiculously overwhelming desert-like heat, no rain, no cold front, so sort of relief from the unrelenting tide of the head, the unending, rarely relieved suffering. Maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad if there had been some change, some mitigating point, some relief other than shitty popsicles and cold showers. This, Tex decided, was the reason she hated their lease. More than once she had taken up the papers in her desk and carried them right down to the apartment manager’s office so she could set fire to them in the lazy man’s face.

Lazy was the right word for it too. Like fuck she cared that it was a holiday weekend, there was no way that anyone in this fucking heat wave, in the whole of this godforsaken city should ever have to sit back and experience three days straight with nothing resembling air conditioning. 

“How hot is it?” Church whined from his place laying under the coffee table. More than once Tex had tried to explain to him that at least from the couch you got a breath of the air from the three fans they had set up in the living room, but Church argued that hot air rises and that the best place he could be was on the floor. Idiot. 

“Probably hotter than it was when you last asked me,” Tex answered, no where near able to keep the annoyance out of her voice. “And that had been hotter than the time before that. And the time before. And the…”

Honestly she could have gone on for about three hours because that was what their life was becoming, but Tex’s attention was caught on something else, something far stranger going on. If stranger was a strong enough word to describe their other roommate, Caboose, hauling the kiddie pool in from the stone patio outside. No, Tex decided after a moment of listening to Caboose hum happily as he picked his way around the mess that their living room had become in the last days where their energy had been too sapped by the heat to tidy. What the hell did the man need with the pool meant to help keep Freckles cool when the put his massive dog outside. 

It was a question that clearly wasn’t going to be answered by Caboose, but the way he moved through the room seemed to garner Church’s attention. 

“What the fu--ow!” Church yelped. Apparently in his confusion the idiot had tried to sit up, hitting his head against the bottom of the coffee table. Tex had to slap a hand over her mouth to keep from giggling at the stupidity of the moment and the sour expression on Church’s face as he rubbed his forehead. 

Not that she really cared about sparing Church’s feelings. Leo could be a massive ass, especially when he was a bit sore. But they had agreed to do their best not to fight when their younger boyfriend was around, especially in the heat. While their discomfort ramped up their own warring personalities, it seemed to make Church’s best friend turned their third into a sad, stressed creature. Church said he thought it was because Caboose’s brain went further toward fried. Tex was pretty certain that Church wasn’t giving credit to Caboose’s efforts to try and comfort them, something completely in character with how Caboose often acted as a gentling barrier between the two of them in any bad mood. 

“Oh, Church, you really should be more careful,” Caboose answered, and the way he immediately kept walking off toward the spare bedroom made Tex not only stand up, but move off in pursuit. 

Hell, even Church was quiet behind her, probably as disturbed by the lack of Caboose racing over to soothe away his pain as she was. 

Truth be told, they hadn’t used the spare bedroom for much since about a month after the three had moved in together. Originally the plan had been for Church and his best friend to live together and Tex join Church in a year or so. But her own temper had gone over poorly with the security firm she’d joined back north, and before she knew it she was crashing in Church’s room in Texas. And weeks after that, when Tex had come back from work, she’d found out that in her absence the relationship between the men in her life had… morphed to something she was more than willing to work with. After that the bed in Caboose’s room had been sold off to help them afford a king-sized in Church’s for them all to share. The spare bedroom had turned more into storage space, and now…

As Tex stood in the door to the room she had to wonder at the sight she was seeing. The formerly empty center of the bedroom had been covered with their spare sheets, laid out in a perfectly flat and increasingly smaller rectangle. Over that had been laid all their towels of any size and every level of absorbency. Everything from the small hand towel that could barely sop up a quarter teaspoon of water to the giant fluffy towels that no one knew the origin of but were battled over after showers, were layered together, with the kiddie pool now centered on top of the mound. 

“Caboose, what is…?” Tex started to say as the man pushes past her and back into the hall. Frowning she trails after him, ignoring the grumbles and grunts of pain as Church undoubtedly squirmed out from under the coffee table. 

The sound of the tub running reaches Tex’s ears before she catches up to Caboose. Why the younger man is sitting on the edge of said tub and filling their mopping bucket with water is beyond her. Well, it is for half a second, and then she smiles, shaking her head and walking back out into the main part of the apartment. She gets to where the hall turns to the living room one way and the kitchen the other just as Church is finally getting to his feet. 

“What the actual hell is going on?” Church demands as Tex turns toward the kitchen. “Please don’t tell me that idiot is planning on dragging the furry avenger back to the house in this heat. I thought we agreed the doggy spa was the best choice in this heat.”

“Yes, we did,” Tex agrees with a chuckle as she grabs a larger tupperware out of a low cabinet before opening the freezer. “I recall it was voted on, despite Caboose’s desires.”

“Dude, Freckles is a portable generator of heat,” Church points out. “Which, you know, is the exact opposite of… Please tell me I did not hear that.”

“You didn’t hear that,” Tex provides immediately, trying not to laugh even louder as she heard the not that distant slosh of water. Her hands, meanwhile were occupied by filling her tupperware with the icecube trays and every last popsicle their seemingly bottomless freezer could provide. 

“No, I seriously think I heard water being…”

His words were cut off with the sound of the tub turning back on, and Tex grinned as she walked past Church. 

“Where the hell are you going with all the cold stuff?” he protested, dogging Tex’s slow steps, ones she placed just right to block the hallway and keep him from rushing to the bathroom. Which meant there was time for Caboose to rush back from the bathroom, a nearly full bucket of cold water in his hands.

“Oh,” Caboose said as he stopped to look at Tex and her collection of frozen things. “Yes. Yes, that will be very perfect Tex. Thank you.”

“Glad you approve,” she smiled, gesturing for Caboose to proceed her into the spare bedroom. She watched as he poured his bucket into the kiddie pool and kept Church, who was practically howling and ranting in his anger behind her, from getting into the room. Then, when Caboose had gone off for his next bucketload, she advanced into the room herself, letting Church rush in beside her. 

“What the actual fuck?” Church asked as he moved to stand by the barely filled pool and look down into the water. “I… This… We can’t…”

“Oh, but we can,” Tex finally, openly laughed as she upended her load of cold into the water. Then, the empty tupperware put aside, she reached for Church. He didn’t dart back from her fast enough, and while he struggled, Tex knew exactly how to win the fight that was going on. She stepped forward, putting one bare foot into the pool and the pleasantly cold water, and grabbed him around the waist. Church, wearing nothing but underwear just as she was, yelped in protest, clearly seeing where this was going. Of course she knew he would stop struggling soon, how could he not? Even with only one foot in the low water she wanted to moan at the pleasant coldness. 

Arms around him Tex bodily lifted her boyfriend up and backed out of the kiddie pool. Church squirmed and struggled in her arms, even as she held him over the pool. Could he not see how futile his struggle was? If she dropped him he’d just make a huge splash. Still, she held him tightly until Caboose had come and gone two more times with water, ignoring Church’s loud protests and pleas. Once the water was high enough she finally lowered Church into the pool, happy that he stopped flailing the closer he got to the water. No one wanted to clean this up, especially not Church, and he was smart enough to realize that if he fought and spilled everything, she would make him clean up every last drop. 

“Tex, please,” Church pleaded one last time before she finally lowered him into the water. 

At first he gasped, and then he went very still, stretched out to the limits his legs allowed in the tiny pool, a pleased sigh on his lips. Church didn’t even look up as Caboose came in with a final bucketful and poured it over Church’s legs. 

“My god, he’s a fucking genius,” Church groaned from the water, not bothering to open his eyes. It meant that only Tex could see Caboose beaming at the praise, and that was more than enough for her. “You guys have got to come in here, it’s so…”

“I think we need to add the fans first,” Tex decides. The moving air would help cool them down. “Caboose, why don’t you…”

She didn’t even have to ask twice before the smiling man climbed in with Church, draping his legs over his boyfriend’s. 

“You’re the best,” she heard Church telling their boyfriend as she walked to the living room for their fans. 

The thing about it? She found herself compelled to agree. 

In the end she’ll have to send one of them out later for more ice for their little pool. And they’ll probably have to take turns refilling it in this heat, but for now they have an answer. A cool, wet, happy solution that should cool them all down and let them be around each other again until the AC was fixed. Of course it meant a new battle was going to be joined soon. 

After all, she was with Church on one point. Freckles-beast was definitely not going to join them in the pool.


End file.
